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While lounging around, human bodies burn about 10 percent more calories in the late afternoon than they do in the early morning, a small study finds. The results, which appear today (November 11) in Current Biology, suggest the effect is independent of external cues such as light, but instead depends entirely on internal circadian rhythms.
“The fact that doing the same thing at one time of day burned so many more calories than doing the same thing at a different time of day surprised us,” says coauthor Kirsi-Marja Zitting of Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School in a statement.
Science News notes that there’s been conflicting evidence about whether human bodies at rest burn calories at a constant rate, or whether the rate varies with time of day. To try to resolve the question, Zitting and her colleagues put each of seven volunteers in ...
